There are many situations in which it is desirable to monitor the status of well-being of a person. Such situations include, but are not limited to, an elderly or vulnerable person living alone, a person suffering from a disability, and a person working in a dangerous environment. In such circumstances it is advantageous, in terms of the costs involved in carrying out the monitoring, for the monitoring to be carried out by an automated process. Furthermore, the automation of such a process removes the opportunity for human error.
It is known for communication devices to be used to raise an alarm when a button is pressed. This method is inadequate in the case where a subject may be rendered unable to make such a communication, such as the case where an elderly person suffers a fall, or where a worker in a dangerous environment becomes unconscious. In these situations, proactive monitoring is required, wherein a request is made to the subject asking them to provide a response to indicate that they are well. If no such response is received, the system can alert others to the situation.
However, it is possible that a system of this nature is open to abuse in the case where a response is made to the request by the system, but the response is sent by someone other than the person being monitored. In this instance, the alarm will not be raised, and hence the well-being of the subject put at risk.
It is broadly the object of the present invention to address such problems.